A Dundee man has spoken of his fear after fire engulfed the staircase in his block of flats, trapping him and other residents including a one-month-old baby in the building.
Firefighters rushed to the blaze, in a block of flats in Thurso Crescent, after terrified residents told the emergency services they were trapped in their homes.
“It was scary,” said Bruce Fowler, 47, who lives in one of the two top-floor flats affected. “I was sleeping when my partner was woken up by a smoke alarm.
“We both realised very quickly that there was no way we could get out. The fire was raging in the stairwell and the smoke was horrific.
“I quickly phoned the fire brigade and then we blocked up our door, but there was still a lot of smoke coming in. We had to hang out of the living room window just to breathe.”
It took four firefighters using breathing apparatus and a housereel to extinguish the flames.
“To be honest, the last thing you want is to be woken up at 3am on a Friday with smoke pouring through your door,” said Mr Fowler, who has lived in the flat for 10 years.
“But it is also not until something like that happens that you really realise you’ve only got one way out.”
“It was very scary,” he added.
After firefighters extinguished the flats blaze, Mr Fowler and his partner were taken in by their neighbours until the morning.
“I’m so grateful to everyone who helped. I can’t thank the emergency services enough, they did a superb job and their response was so quick.
“My neighbours, also, were incredibly kind and generous,” he added.
Firefighters at the scene said they believed the blaze may have been accelerated by a large quantity of paper, cardboard and a discarded computer desk.
Mr Fowler said: “We put all the stuff outside the flat so we could take it to the tip the next day, but there was nothing there at all that could have ignited it.”
A spokesman for the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service said: “At 02.58 on Saturday morning Dundee control received a number of calls to a report of a fire in a flat at 101 Thurso Crescent, Dundee.
“Initial calls indicated that there were people trapped within their homes in the block of flats. Three appliances from Macalpine Road and Blackness Road were dispatched.
“The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service would once again highlight that all combustible material should be removed from common stairwells due to the fact that should there be a fire then the means of escape from any flats is blocked.
“The fire highlights the importance of having a working smoke detector to alert occupants of a fire within a property.”